The Space Between (30 page)

Obie lay on the table, arms spread. His mouth was shut, lips white.

Azrael smiled, looking cheerful and friendly in the candlelight. “Now, time for some fun.” He glanced up at Truman, holding a finger to his lips, then leaned his elbows on the table, speaking close to Obie’s ear. “Your sister’s on Earth. Did you know that?”

Obie didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice sounded dusty. “I have a lot of sisters.”

“I’m talking about the little one, with the two adorable metal teeth and no sense of self-preservation. You might remember her?”

“You’re lying. Daphne doesn’t leave the city.”

Instantly, Azrael’s expression darkened and a scalpel appeared in his hand. He held it above Obie’s arm, leaning on his elbows so that the table shifted and squealed on its makeshift supports. “I never tell lies.”

Obie tugged hard against the iron nails and Truman winced as the wood squealed but the nails didn’t pull free.

“She’s here,” Azrael said. “But Dreadful doesn’t have to kill her. Dreadful doesn’t have to kill anyone. I could decide we’ve done enough demon-chasing for a while, send her home. All you have to do is tell me where your little puppy is.”

When Obie answered, his voice was broken, cracked and desperate. “I told you, I
can’t
.”

“Then Dreadful’s going to have a really good month.” Azrael’s hand drifted along Obie’s arm, not quite letting the blade touch the skin. “I’ve got another one for your record-keeping. While you were busy lying here, your various friends and relatives are out there dying.”

“My family.” Obie’s voice sounded parched. “You’re talking about my family.”

Without warning, Azrael cut another hashmark across Obie’s forearm. “Say hello to Myra.”

As the scalpel drew blood, something thudded on the dais, making the floor shudder.

Truman moved forward cautiously, crouching to examine the pale form that had appeared at his feet, eerie in the flickering candlelight.

He was looking at Myra, but not the sly, smiling girl he’d sat next to at the bar. This was the body that Daphne had found in the open field. This was a car crash, a girl in pieces. Her eyes were open, staring at the dark ceiling. Her ribs had been peeled open and the wound was ragged and bloodless. There was still a little bit here and there, soaking her dress and dripping down her chin, but not much. Where it had splattered on the steps, it burned away the carpet and then began to eat through the floor. He clamped a hand over his mouth but couldn’t smother the low, horrified noise that rose in his throat.

Azrael crossed the dais and stood over him. “Do you see that? That could easily be Daphne.”

“No,” Truman whispered. “Please, no.”

In the corner Obie lay staked to the board. His arms oozed with rows of shallow cuts. “Azrael, please.” He sounded hopeless and exhausted. “I don’t know where she is. I can’t give you what you want. She’s with her mother, and you won’t find her.”

“That’s a good guess, but no, she’s not with her mother.”

Obie went rigid. In candlelight, his face was waxy under the blindfold. His voice was hollow. “What did you do?”

“I took care of her mother.” Azrael’s expression was warm. Sympathetic. “It was picturesque and ultimately, quick. I came to Elizabeth in the city garden at Garfield Park, and proposed a scheme. I like to think that she even considered it. It would have been a valiant sacrifice, her demon child in exchange for salvation.”

The words were weirdly familiar.
Sacrifice
and
garden
, and they tripped something in Truman’s memory. He’d been going to catechism for most of his life.

“The Sorrowful Mysteries,” he whispered, kneeling over Myra’s body. Her forehead was still wreathed in thistles. “The agony in the garden, the crown of thorns—those are Mysteries of the Rosary.”

Azrael nodded agreeably. “I thought it had a certain grandeur to it. There’s a poetic quality to recreating a religious tableau. It was no good, though. She made the wrong choice in the end.”

As Azrael spoke, the body of Myra dissolved, transformed. Now Truman was kneeling over a woman with thick brown hair and half her face missing.

Truman swallowed, shaking his head. “How? How did you kill her?”

Azrael stood next to Obie, and the light from the candles made him look very cruel suddenly. “I never touched her, just told my dark friend where to find her.”

“She was good,” Obie whispered. His voice was shaking. “She was my
wife
. I
loved
her.”

Azrael leaned closer, his voice almost tender in the dark. “Of course you did. You love all the little broken things. Now where
is
it?”

“I don’t know. Please—please believe me.”

The pain in Obie’s voice made Truman’s chest hurt. It was too raw, too familiar, and he closed his eyes.

Azrael turned and walked back across the dais to where Truman knelt above Obie’s wife. He pointed at the crumpled body, the obliterated face. “That’s what happens to people who choose demons instead of salvation. Sometimes, the only way to save someone is to just let them go.”

Truman stared up at him, shaking his head. “You can’t save me,” he whispered. “Nothing can. Church never did, and neither did Obie, or school or my family or being drunk or being dead. And Daphne can’t save me either—you can’t save other people. But I’m
better
when I’m with her.”

“No, when you’re with her, you’re still just as wretched as you ever were, and she’s still a dirty little succubus.” Azrael spoke softly, watching Truman with something close to sadness. “But that’s why I keep Dark Dreadful around. I can still save you, but I’m warning you right now, this is going to be very hard. It’s going to hurt.”

Truman felt cold and suddenly wide awake. “What are you going to do to Daphne?”

“Nothing. I won’t even touch her. But she’s going to die, and it’s going to be horrible.”

And Truman was awake again, heart slamming. In the bed Daphne lay very close, clutching his arm. Her fingers dug into his wrist and he sat up.

In the dark he could see shapes and shadows, the faint outlines of the room. Daphne huddled next to him, making a high whimpering noise. He reached for her, and she reached back, collapsing into his arms. She was shivering so hard that at first he thought that she might be crying, but she made no noise and where her cheek pressed against his, her face was dry.

“He won’t kill me,” she said and her voice sounded small and ferocious. “Not like that.”

“It’s okay,” he whispered, but he didn’t believe it. “Don’t talk like that. Everything’s going to be okay.”

He said it firmly, holding her against his chest. The fact that he was lying didn’t matter.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I
t’s five o’clock in the morning and we’re all awake. Truman was first to get up and now he sits perched on the corner of the bed, not smoking, but looking like he wants to.

Raymie is on the carpet by my feet, playing with the sewing kit and making big black stitches all over her rabbit.

Truman scoops her up. Then he sets her in his lap and covers her ears with his hands. “Okay, I think it’s time to talk.”

At first, I think that he wants to talk about what happened in the bathtub, but he takes a deep breath and says, “Azrael’s the one who killed your sisters, right? Well, he’s doing it according to the Mysteries of the Rosary and he’s almost done with the Sorrowful ones. He nailed Obie’s hands to the table, but he hasn’t raised him yet.”

“What do you mean ‘raise’ him? Why would he raise him?”

“Because the last Sorrowful Mystery is crucifixion. He did the agony in the garden and the crown of thorns. He missed the flagellation, but—”

“No, he didn’t,” I say with a heavy feeling in my chest. “Deirdre was beaten so badly that she was unrecognizable.”

Truman swallows. “Then he’s going in order. There’s still the carrying of the cross, but after that, he’ll move on to the crucifixion.” As he speaks, Raymie stares around the room, sucking on her fingers, peering at me from between Truman’s hands.

“Why are you doing that?” I ask. “Why are you covering her ears?”

“Because this is bad, okay? Do you want her to hear that her dad is nailed to a table? That he’s trapped in some busted-up church and we can’t even do anything to help because Azrael’s a psychopath?” He nods down at Raymie. “And that he’s going to keep doing it until Obie tells him where she is.”

“I don’t think Obie can tell him, even if he wanted to. I think we’re the only people who know.”

Truman nods, staring off at something I can’t see. “I think we’re wrong about the church. We keep trying to figure out where to go, like Obie’s in a real place, but what if he’s not? That club I went to last night with Moloch was someplace else. I mean, it wasn’t anywhere, really.”

I nod. “It was in the liminal space. The in-between.”

Truman presses his hands harder over Raymie’s ears and his voice drops to a whisper. “All I know is, I saw a lot of dead people there. Her mother—one of those people was her
mother
, and it was bad, and it was
messy
.”

I nod, feeling a surge of sorrow for a woman I never met. For Obie, who lost her.

Truman watches me, looking wary. “I think it’s time for you to tell me about Dreadful.”

It’s disorienting to think that I’ve known about Dark Dreadful for all my life, but I’ve never had to describe her. I close my eyes, trying to find the words. “She’s a—a kind of holy messenger. She eats demons and drinks all their blood so nothing bad can get out.”

Truman lets his breath out in a shaky sigh. “And your sisters, they . . . ran into her, then?”

I nod, looking at the carpet, but
ran into
is the wrong way to say it and we both know that. Azrael is the one who tells her where to go. What to do.

After a moment, Truman leans closer. His expression is tense and I think he’s going to tell me that he’s sorry, but instead he says, “There’s this other thing. Moloch told me something last night. He told me your friend in the suit is my father. Did you know?”

I shake my head, but even as I do, the revelation seems right and logical. Obie was the one who took Truman out of Pandemonium, but it was Beelzebub’s decision to send him back. Beelzebub who didn’t want hand him over to the Eaters. No, I didn’t know, but I should have.

“What’s he like?” Truman says, bouncing Raymie in the crook of his arm.

For a second, I don’t know what to say. I try to think of details that won’t sound terrible. He’s asking for the sort of things he told me about his mother. All the little quirks and preferences that define a person.

“He likes Italian opera,” I say. “And nine millimeter handguns. Before my dad put him in charge of Collections, he was a war god in Canaan, but now he mostly sends other people to do the killing. He acts dignified and like he’s above things, but he’s the one who started calling Collections the ‘rag and bone shop.’ At home, he has a cloud of flies that follows him everywhere. He likes poetry by Yeats and William Blake, but his favorite quote is from Kenneth Bainbridge, speaking to Oppenheimer after the Trinity test, with the mushroom cloud still in the sky. ‘Now we are all sons of bitches.’”

Truman doesn’t answer right away. He sits on the bed, staring down at Raymie. “What’s your dad’s favorite quote?”

I don’t know how to answer. I could make something up, but it wouldn’t be the truth. There are the cliches, the obvious ones—
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven
or
Here at least, we shall be free.
But none of them seems like my father. “I don’t know.”

“So, you can tell me all that stuff about Beelzebub, but not your own dad?”

His tone is arch, like he’s being sarcastic, but it’s true. I know more about Beelzebub’s opinions on modern art than I know about my father’s entire life. All I know about Lucifer is a story of who he once was, a mercenary angel, practically a mythology. I have no idea who he is now.

“Beelzebub’s my teacher,” I say. “He’s the only one besides Obie who ever asks my opinion or even
listens
to me. He’s the only father I’ve ever really had.”

Truman grabs his cigarettes from the nightstand and fidgets with them like he can’t decide whether or not to take one out of the pack. Then he stops and squares his shoulders like he’s finally decided something. “I hate him.”

“Don’t,” I say, feeling breathless. “You can’t hate him—you don’t even know him.”

He sets the cigarettes back down. “Whose fault is that?”

The room is silent and dry like the desert. Cold, like we never lay in the bathtub, hidden behind the curtain. Like I never saw the tree.

Truman sighs and sets Raymie on the bed. Then he crosses to the sliding door and steps out onto the balcony.

For a moment, I just sit on the couch looking after him.